Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Embodiments relate to providing data to computer software applications, and in particular, to methods and apparatuses linking customized external widgets to dashboard data. Specifically, computer software applications are traditionally created by programmers implementing certain functionality in specialized computer source code.
Over time, many types of computer applications have been created, and it has been desirable to allow various software applications to work together to implement more comprehensive functionality. However, for software applications to work together, yet more programming is required to create software frameworks that allow different software applications to communicate with each other and control the use of each application's functionality in a higher level process.
The programming necessary to compose different applications or other types of software components into customized applications with enhanced functionality can be time consuming and costly. Programming specialists are typically required, and complex specifications and architectures for tying software components together must be specified.
A software widget (“widget”) is an application accessible by a user (e.g., via a desktop) that provides one or more particular functions. The usage of the term widget in this specification is to be distinguished from mere graphical components such as a button, cursor, or other virtual mechanisms used in a graphical user interface, because such virtual components are not applications by themselves and have no underlying processing algorithms or functionality.
Example widgets include clocks, calculators, calendars, desktop notes, etc. Widgets may be represented as icons on a computer display. The icons may be used to display information and provide input/output mechanisms for entering data and presenting the results. Widgets typically include one or more images that may be displayed on the GUI and may further include less than ten to several hundred lines of XML, JavaScript, or VBScript, or other programming languages, depending on complexity, to implement the widget's logic.
Again, however, the code of the widget allowing its integration with a particular platform, typically needs to be created. In particular, system administrators must typically define mappings between the various programs, applications, or other software components being accessed via a portal. Such mappings are typically created using metadata or metadata-like languages by a programmer or system administrator, and therefore suffer from similar cost, complexity, and time problems mentioned above. This can restrict the flexible implementation of a widget, limiting the types of information available to a user.